One year ago on Friday, Jan 13th, I heard the words, “I am 99.9% sure the lump is breast cancer” I sat stone faced, I nodded and after what seemed hours I uttered, “okay, now what?”. I had just had a mammogram and then an ultrasound of a mass in my right breast. Minutes later, I was having a biopsy. They do not mess around in this small-town teaching hospital. Side note, who goes in for a mammogram on Friday 13th?

I drove home unblinking, walked in the door stunned and in shock. I looked at Tim and told him that I had cancer. He never blinked, he never wavered, “we will do this together”.

I remember we were supposed to head into work, we found ourselves at the ocean. It is the place I can make sense of the senseless, it is the place that soothes my soul, it is a place of healing for me.

Tim was true to his word, all the chemo, the week in the hospital, all the surgeries, all seven and a half weeks of radiation, all of it. He sat with me, sitting in the hard chair of the watcher. I have never loved him more. You know who else was there through all of it? My heavenly father, holding me tight, always.

This last year has been a blur of doctors, operating rooms, needles, chemo and radiation. I feel like I have aged 5 years since last January. It has also been a blur of helping hands, urgent prayers, physical and virtual hugs, and the abundant peace that Jesus provided.

I was exhausted, so exhausted. I was, at times, void of emotion and in an instant full of emotion. I was never afraid, I always felt peace covering me.

There are snapshots that flash though my mind:
Shaving my head
Laughing with the nurse before my port placement
Laughing with the same nurse months later before my emergency port removal
Loving arms of my husband
Faithful friend’s offers of help
Caring nurses
Caring doctors
Days that I felt well enough to be in the sun
Farm-fresh eggs from my boss
Family gatherings
Friends visiting
Months of not having to shave my legs
Sweet times with my heavenly father
I chose to shuffle through only the funny or encouraging snapshots. The others are there, but I choose to dwell in the grace and faithfulness I experienced through this year.

I still have a journey ahead, but the tough stuff is over. I have my one year mammogram this coming Friday, I am expecting an “all clear”. I continue to feel the peace that has covered me this last year.

As a follow up to yesterday’s blog, I want to thank the men who recognized the need in my children for a male presence. There were many, my dad, my brothers, and wonderful men from my church family. Youth pastors played huge roles in my children’s lives.

To the men who complimented my daughter, who gently teased her, who showed her how a man should treat a woman, how a dad should love his children and how a husband cared for his family, I am eternally grateful to you.

To the men who took my son on father/son fishing trips, to the men who mentored my son, who pointed him to Jesus, who showed him how to be a man, how to shave, how to treat a lady, who showed him how to protect and care for the women in his life, I can not express my gratitude.

Men, I want to challenge you to look for the fatherless around you, take a few minutes to think about how you can fill the gap, how you can serve that single mom that has no idea how to teach her young son how to grow up to be a man. She probably won’t ask, a single mom is used to doing it on her own, she may not know how to ask or where to look for help. If she is like me she won’t even know, when asked, how to articulate what she needs.

This is what she needs: she needs whole families to take her children on outings, she needs for her children to see how whole families interact with each other. She needs her children to see you treat your wife with respect, she needs her children to see you hold your wife’s hand, and hug your children. She needs you to show her son how to shave, how to change the oil on the car, how to set up a tent, how to fish, and how to play ball. She needs you to take her daughter with your daughters on an ice cream date, she needs you to show her daughter how a man should treat a woman, how a daddy treats his daughters.

God blessed me with amazing friends and family that recognized what I could not express, my children would not have grown into amazing adults with out my God, friends and family. Thank-you is too small a word to express my gratitude, but it is the only word I have.

One of Jason’s very good friends posted a blog about Jason yesterday. I wish I could express how it warms my heart when I read remembrances of Jason. Often I learn new things about him, things I did not know, things that touch me.

**It has been 3.5 years since my good friend Jason Taylor went home to be with his King. With the passing of time, it doesn’t get any easier. Grief comes and goes. But the happy thought remains that I will see him soon and we will be reunited together with the Saints and Jesus Christ. Perhaps we’ll watch heavenly cartoons or shoot flaming arrows while the harps play. I don’t know. But I do know this: I miss you Jason and we will talk soon brother!**

Four days ago saw the passing of a very good friend of mine. Today is his birthday. I would like to celebrate his life with this limerick:

When I first met the man Jason Taylor in the spring of Two Thousand and Six, I was blessed to say the very least.

He made me laugh and I did likewise. He was an amazing addition to the summer staff of Canyonview Camp.

We formed a quick bond with one another because we had a lot in common. We possessed some of the same goals.

He was widely known as TROGDOR THE BURNiNATOR around day camp. The kids loved this gentle giant.. . . . . read more here

I recently read something that is so true of where I am now in my grieving process.

Here are all the links to all 7 blogs in case you missed one. Trust me you do not want to miss one. All on the same subject, all so different yet so similar.

Before November gives way to December and all that seems to go with this time of year, make sure to read these. After this week of reading these I feel better prepared to enter this busy season. I will be more intentional with my thanksgiving, more satisfied with what I have, more compassionate to those who don’t have, more focused on the real reason for the season. I will be more thankful.

Take a few minutes, ready them one right after the other, like chapters in a book. it won’t take long. Choose just one or two of the suggestions to try see if it doesn’t change the way you look at celebrating the birth of our Jesus.

When they couldn’t find a way to get him in because of the crowd, they went up on the roof and let him down on his stretcher through the tiles into the middle of the room, right in front of Jesus. Luke 5:19

From the time the fireworks tents start appearing through August is what I call the season of Jason. (You can read the whole story here.) This season the story of the man being lifted up on his stretcher and brought to Jesus by his friends has been running through my head.

Many times through these three years when I have been at my lowest I have heard from you that you are praying. Your prayers have carried me time and time again to Jesus. You did for me what I often could not do for myself. When the grief was crippling you picked up my stretcher and carried me. You spoke the words to Jesus when I had no words.

I write this today to say thank you to all of you, I have felt your prayers, I have felt you lifting me to the presence of Jesus. I have felt his healing grace over and over. Thank you for being there still, three years later. Thank you for allowing me to grieve, for not telling me it was time to get up and walk on my own, for giving me the luxury of being carried. Thank you for walking beside me when I can walk, and then carrying me again when I need to be carried. I don’t have enough words to thank you properly, but I want you to know, that I know you are there, I know you are lifting me up to Jesus. Thank you.

First to my Dad – I remember trips we took, places we saw, your humor and your aversion to camping. But we did it one summer, 6 weeks in that camper van, all of us sleeping in it every night all the way to Indiana and back. We survived. I remember driving down the highway in a station wagon and you eating as many cherries as you could, holding the pits in your mouth until you could hold no more, then in machine gun fashion spewing them out out the car window as you drove. I remember driving back from grandma’s in Richland and the huge blizzard in the gorge. we got in that fender bender, by the time you got back in the car one side of your face was coated with about 1/4 inch of ice. The first thing you said when your face thawed was “never again”. And never again did we travel the gorge at that time of year. And then your love for my kids, how you cared for them and helped me so often as a single parent. Thank you for the love and example you were to all of us.

One thing I just remembered today as I was looking at some pictures, you loved photography. I remember you telling me how to compose a picture to give it depth. I wonder what your photography would have looked like had you been able to afford a nice camera? Love you and miss you, I am so glad you were there to welcome Jason to his heavenly home.

To my brothers, what great uncles you have been to my children, I don’t know if I can ever express to you my gratitude for the care and love you showered on my kids as they navigated life with out a dad. Dave, even without children of your own you have loved and cared for so many kids, you have been a great example of unconditional love. Steve, your example to my kids of a daddy and godly father is something that I will be forever grateful for.

Tom, papa, I can not tell you what it meant to me when you and Sammye “adopted” my kids. Your love of them is something I can never thank you enough for. What a godly example you have been to them.

Last but not least, my husband, one thing that attracted me to you was the love you had for your kids, they are your heart. I had seen too many single dads fade from their kids every day lives. I was so impressed with your love and care of your kids, I knew I could trust you with my heart. Then you loved mine too, you are a wonderful “Dod”.

My heart overflows with things I want to say to you. You were my first, I truly did not know what I was doing with you, and you tested me from the first few minutes of your life. When they handed you to me I wanted to look at you all over, you had different ideas, you wanted to eat and you made your will very plain. You were loud and active. Even then I realize you were charting your own course.

As you grew I began to see the soft inside of that hard exterior, you had a heart like no ones I had seen. You loved everyone. You saw beyond the surface to the person beneath, you had such an eclectic collection of friends. I loved that about you.

What I want you to know today is that I miss you every day, but I am okay. People told me that pain would dull, I did not believe it. I thought I would always have this huge sharp pain every time I took a breath. God is good, when I think of you now it is with a smile of warm memories. God was gracious to let me be your mom for almost 30 years.

I wonder about you still, what life is like for you? How did it feel to take that first full breath of heaven? Know this today, that I miss you with every part of myself, but I am okay, I am happy, I am content.